QUESTION: My husband had a dish at a local restaurant that was described as “frenched” chicken. The waitress could not give us a very clear definition. Can you explain it?ANSWER: Usually, frenched is a kitchen term that means scrapping something free from part of the bone. The bones on rack of lamb or a crown roast, for instance, often are frenched to make it easier to serve them.I hadn’t seen it done with chicken, so I called chef John Blumreich of Restaurant 49 in Kannapolis, N.C., to ask. His explanation led to another question. Their chicken vendor calls it frenched, he said, but it’s more commonly known as airline chicken, a boneless breast with the first joint of the wing still attached.Why is that called airline? Some stories claim it’s because the wing is attached, but most sources credit the airlines with developing the cut in the 1960s. When meals were free, they wanted something that looked like you were getting something a little more substantial.It’s also called a hotel cut, a Statler breast or a chicken supreme.

QUESTION: I was given a dessert recipe that included raw egg whites and ¼ cup lemon juice. I remember being told that lemon juice “cooks” raw eggs, but I’m still reluctant to use it. What do you think?ANSWER: I think that’s taking a pretty big risk. It’s impossible to predict the acidity in a fresh lemon, so you really don’t know what the effect would be.To double-check, I asked Benjamin Chapman, a food safety expert with N.C. State University and the North Carolina Cooperative Extension. He agreed that the acidity in the lemon juice might not affect salmonella if it is already present in the egg.More importantly, though, salmonella is only one pathogen that can be present in raw egg. Others, such as E.coli O157, are acid-tolerant. So if E.coli was introduced while you were making the dish, it could grow despite the lemon juice.The best practice for that kind of recipe is to use pasteurized eggs, other shell eggs or a liquid-egg product, and to make sure you keep the dessert refrigerated. Or you could just skip that recipe and find something else to make.